


Take a Walk in My Skin

by asuralucier



Category: Inception (2010)
Genre: Age Difference, Asphyxiation, Crazy as Crazy Does, Creepy Nudity, Desire, F/F, Identity Porn, Loneliness, Mental health or lack thereof, Pedagogical Weird, Post-Canon, Pretentious Discourse, Treat, ambiguous ending
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-31
Updated: 2019-08-31
Packaged: 2020-09-02 00:54:08
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,153
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20267356
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/asuralucier/pseuds/asuralucier
Summary: “Are you my trauma?” Ariadne asks Mal. The other woman looks at her down the tip of her nose and Mal laughs.“It sounds like one of those picture books, you know. ‘Are you my mother? Can you help me find her?’”





	Take a Walk in My Skin

**Author's Note:**

  * For [ictus](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ictus/gifts).

> Optional mood music: [Echo Home](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K1o7GQj4AK0) \- The Kills.

The first time Mal shows up in her dream, Ariadne tells herself she’s not surprised. 

The job is a big one; it's showy, ambitious, and most importantly, undermanned. Ariadne's the youngest on the crew, which means aside from designing three levels of dreamscape more or less from scratch, there are other considerations. Like _politics_ \- always a pain in the ass.

She's tired and fed up. There's construction work going around the clock near her hotel. She's still getting used to the food. The excuses, which aren't really excuses at all because they provably exist and remain inconvenient, all make up part of the bigger picture.

Ariadne tells herself that all this must be true. It’s a perfect storm of subconscious what-the-fuckery and so that’s -

Fine. All in a day’s work. 

”Why are you still here? You’re dead, and Dom’s moved on. You don’t have any cause to be here.” 

Mal smiles broadly, red-lipped and dark like a demon bathed in neon city lights. Her dress is midnight blue and sheer, and Ariadne can see the outline of her breasts, light catching on skin. She says, “But you remember me, Ariadne, child of the labyrinth. You remember and you think of me. You long for me. And so here I am.” 

Ariadne thinks about throwing herself off the Taipei 101, free fall for all of a hundred storeys down to meet cruel, unrelenting concrete. Certain death and certain escape even if she does it feet first. But she stays still and takes another sip of her drink, some kind of fizzy strange alcohol-laced juice that leaves a strange metallic taste on the tip of her tongue, kind of like somebody has gone and shoved a gun in her mouth.

Someone has. 

Quitting the job midway is not so good for politics. But Ariadne does anyway, and she flies a punishing twenty hours to Marrakesh. It’s the last address she has on hand for Arthur and Eames, who are not so good with addresses. They don’t like to be found. 

But she finds them, rather, just Arthur, doing a batch of laundry in a tub in just his shorts with soap clinging to the tips of his fingers. Ariadne’s first thought isn’t necessary that Arthur’s gone off the deep end necessarily. It’s more that he has come to terms with Eames, and maybe that sort of thing comes out more naturally for Arthur via clean laundry.

“It’s good to see you,” Arthur says, wiping his hands dry. “Eames is out. Aren’t you supposed to be on a job?” 

“I was,” Ariadne nods, stepping inside. “But I quit.” 

Arthur regards her for a long moment, not kind, not brotherly, just practical. “You just have to tough it out, sometimes. While you’ve got the energy to spare.” 

“It’s not that.” Ariadne shakes her head; there’s either a joke or an insult buried in there somewhere, but she ignores both. “My skin is thick enough. It’s Mal. I saw her, when I was under.” She and Arthur are not exactly friends, but she doesn’t have any reason to hide anything from him.

Arthur twitches. “Mal.” 

She sinks down on a chair and sits on her hands. The chair is slightly rickety and it doesn’t look or feel like it belongs in the room. “Crazy, right?” 

“Not really,” Arthur says. “When someone tries to shoot you in the head, shank you in the ribs, or drown you in a crowd, it’s something you tend to remember.” 

“Do you see her?” Ariadne presses. “Mal stabbed you in the leg. I'm not alone here. Or is that something you just forget?” 

“No,” Arthur shrugs, the movement listless and ill-fitting on his composed frame. “Maybe I just need less than you.” 

His abruptness is suddenly frustrating to her where it’s usually a comfort (inasmuch as a man like Arthur can offer comfort). And anyway, Arthur isn’t usually a person who dicks around with what he means. But maybe that’s what happens, when you decide you need somebody more than anyone else in this whole wide world. That such knowledge, both old and new, will make everything suddenly _all right_, but Ariadne knows better. 

She would have thought Arthur did, too.

“You can’t run from me forever,” Mal says, prettily sipping a Cape Codder. The rose pink of the cocktail is a startling contrast against her dark red mouth. This time, she’s dressed more casually. A filmy cream-colored blouse, the top buttons undone to show off the smooth skin covering the hollow of her throat; a thin gold chain with a single blue jewel, a dark stormy sapphire, invites scrutiny down her neckline; and finally, jeans that are tight, but not too tight as to be immodest. A little imagination, it’s good for the soul. 

“I’m not running from you,” Ariadne returns quietly. “I just don’t understand. You’re _dead_. And during the job, we. You said good-bye.”

“But not to you.” 

Ariadne decides to chance it. She says, “Good-bye.” 

Mal is still there. She blows bubbles into her drink through her bright blue straw, and Ariadne is reminded of how crocodiles sometimes let out bubbles while they’re lying in wait. She remembers learning that from a nature documentary she'd watched once in school.

Ariadne goes and finds Miles in Paris. Miles, who is now a Professor Emeritus and he’s been moved to an office in the basement to reflect this recent prestige. But the room is large, though still somehow cozy, with new carpets recently put in, old sprawling heavy wooden bookshelves cramped with titles in French, German, Russian, English, and Italian. The room has a smell, rose-chemical and sweet, kind of like a woman’s perfume.

Good for Miles. 

“I see her.” Ariadne tells him without preamble and she almost thinks that she’s given Miles a heart attack. But he sits down, and asks if she’d like a coffee.

“I’m trying to cut out caffeine,” Ariadne says. “No, thank you.” 

“Have a coffee,” Miles says again. This time, it’s not exactly a question. Ariadne can’t parse out what might happen if she refuses, but another part of her is wary, and tells her without any real substance that she’s maybe better off not finding out.

“Okay.” 

Miles dials a number on his extension and asks for someone to bring them two coffees. They chit-chat about basically nothing until the coffees arrive. Ariadne can wax and wane on about smog and roadside noodle stands easy. She lives and breathes detail and it’s nice to put them into practice in conversation for once, and not matters of life or death. 

“Have you told anyone?” 

“Just Arthur.”

“And what is his opinion?” 

“That I need to tough it out and I’m dealing with untreated trauma...probably.” Those hadn’t been Arthur’s exact words, but Ariadne thinks it’s probably enough of a paraphrase in spirit. “But he doesn’t think I’m crazy.” 

“You are not crazy,” Miles says, and touches her hand. “Madwomen, you find them everywhere; they might as well be sane. They’re not stuck up in the attic, not anymore.” 

“Thanks,” Ariadne says feelingly. “I know I’m not.” 

“Are you my trauma?” Ariadne asks Mal. The other woman looks at her down the tip of her nose and Mal laughs. The sound is bright and cutting, almost like acid rain.

“It sounds like one of those picture books, you know. ‘Are you my mother? Can you help me find her?’” To add insult to injury, the words even rhyme in a way that sounds unnatural.

“You’re not anything like my mother,” Ariadne says, perhaps a bit too defensively, but she knows that to be true. It’s hard to imagine Mal as anyone’s mother. Nothing out of place, nothing to suggest that she might be an embarrassment to those around her, by virtue of how nearly nothing on Mal’s body is out of place. It’s not how a mother’s body should be. A mother’s body sometimes is a picture of a skin-crawling trauma, having never recovered from the life that which was ripped from her, out of her belly or her cunt. 

Instead, Mal's like the perfect ghost drawn out of someone’s head. Her fingers are bare, and there isn’t a wedding ring on her left hand. Ariadne can’t see a tan line, either. 

Mal reaches to touch her and Ariadne’s first thought is to recoil from her. But she doesn’t make it in time and Mal presses a finger against her mouth. 

Ariadne holds perfectly still. After all, a finger is a step up from the gun. A finger is nothing, even if it can so easily slide down her throat to curl around her tonsils. 

Mal says, “And what was she like, your _Maman_?” 

“She’s dead.” 

This surprises Mal, whose pupils blow wide and dark. “You know, a mind tells no lie. If you tell a lie, maybe it’s your mother who will haunt you next.” 

A strange little chill crawls up Ariadne’s spine, pausing just so in the crook between every vertebrae. “You admit then, that you’re haunting me.” 

“Is your mother dead?” 

“Yes.” Ariadne swallows. “When I was little. I hardly remember her. But she wasn’t like you.” 

“If you don’t remember, then how would you know?” Mal smiles, indulgent, even motherly. She pulls a gun, and clicks the safety in deliberate slow motion this time, as if she wants Ariadne to see it coming. 

“Can you remember the first time you fell in love with a building?” 

Ariadne doesn’t mean to stay in Paris. She’s since developed a real distaste for the place; the way French sticks and flakes like a badly baked croissant; the incessant _pallyvousing_; the way that cobblestones lodge themselves onto the bottom of someone’s shoe and gives them a limp. But she can’t say why. Ariadne doesn’t like to think that it’s because of the bridge. The bridge where she’d died when Mal had impaled her with a knife. 

Miles meets her on the stone carved steps of the college. He’s wearing a cozy wool coat and a bright red scarf. If he senses anything wrong with her, he doesn’t say. In fact, he seems eager to start distracting her with conversation. 

“Can someone be in love with a building?” Ariadne wonders. 

“One can be in love with anything, if they tried,” Miles says. “Come on, the first time you walked inside of a place, and thought, _if only that had come out of my mind_.” 

“I’d have my ego checked.” Ariadne shrugs.

“Humor me,” Miles says. “I’ve always been curious.” 

“About me?” 

“You were a standout student,” Miles tells her, as if it’s something that Ariadne doesn’t know. The compliment lands a little weird, off-kilter. 

“Well,” Ariadne says, looking around; she doesn’t know what she’s looking for, but it’s good being aware. “Lincoln Cathedral?” 

Miles goes still, as if he is turning this information in his head. Ariadne has a weird sense of osmosis, like she’s seen the exact stillness somewhere else before. “I’m from Lincoln, it’s a city that has since disappeared inside of me. Underneath the deepened reaches of London and Paris. I hardly know myself.” 

“Are you from Lincoln?” Ariadne blinks. “That’s. How did I not know?” 

Miles turns away from her. “Because I never told you, or anyone.” 

Something is wrong. Something is very wrong, and the more a growing panic seizes Ariadne’s ribs, the more she’s aware that it’s like the last time. Arthur had a term for it. _Drowning in a crowd._ Just a gaze is enough to pull you under and push you over the edge. 

Suddenly, it’s not Miles, but Mal, pressed up entirely too close to Ariadne they might as well be sharing air. 

Mal is knotting the red scarf gently around Ariadne's throat. She pulls, slowly, and Ariadne tries to swallow. She knows she should fight, to claw tooth and nail for her next breath because she doesn’t think Mal can do it; Mal doesn’t have the strength needed to choke her to death. Mal says, “You tried to trick me, Ariadne.” 

“How did you fucking do that?” 

“Why does a mind do anything? Because it wants. Because it lies to itself.” Mal takes her time, winding the red wool around her wrists, giving her some leverage. “Tell me why you like Lincoln Cathedral.” 

“You mean, besides the fact that it's unlucky? Things kept happening to it, earthquakes, collapses. It's like the little building that could. Except I guess it's - pretty big. The imp,” Ariadne swallows against the scratched material again, but her hands are numb, the rest of her body frozen. “There’s a grotesque little imp. Fourteenth century maybe. Sent to do the devil’s work only to be stuck in a church slinging rocks at angels. I always thought that was funny.” 

“Funny,” Mal smiles. “Me too.” 

Ariadne wakes, gasping for breath. She reaches out, willing her fingers to be claws and somebody curses. Then - “Easy, easy. You’re fine.” 

“Eames?” 

“Yes,” Eames fills her vision, his expression perplexed and even a little worried. “So? The stronger compound, how’d you find it?” 

“It worked at first,” Ariadne says. “I thought she.” She touches a hand to her throat, the tightness and hotness of the scarf ever fresh in memory. Nearly as real as life itself. 

Eames touches her shoulder, and Ariadne nearly jerks back from him. “Was it rough?” 

“She choked me. Jesus fucking Christ.” 

Eames doesn’t say anything. Then he stands. “Let me get you some water.” 

He returns with a glass and Ariadne gulps down its contents without thinking, half expecting to throw it all back up, but she doesn’t. 

“Ariadne.” 

“Yeah.” 

“You can’t work like this,” Eames says. “You have to...find a way to live with her, or.” He cuts off abruptly. “Never mind.” 

“I _know_ that,” Ariadne returns, a bit snappish and she’s immediately sorry. “Or what?” 

“Militarize your subconscious. It’s not something I recommend for someone like you. It’ll compromise your mind. But maybe you’ll feel safer. More in control.” 

Ariadne flicks her fingers against Eames’s temple and he barely flinches. But he does say, “That hurts.” 

“So you’re the grotesque inside my head,” Ariadne says to Mal, whom she finds in a sunlit conservatory, surrounded by glass and dressed in white. The glass is the most polished Ariadne has ever seen. Usually, wear and tear is important, it makes a place lived in a real; flecks of dust, a fingerprint.

“Do I look grotesque to you?” 

“Not particularly,” Ariadne sits down on one of the braided wicker chairs, feeling the thin cushion sink underneath her weight. “It’s been suggested I militarize my subconscious. With you here I can’t work. You’d just fuck everything up.” 

“That hurts my feelings.” 

“It’s the truth,” Ariadne says, setting her chin stubbornly. “What are you _doing_ here?” 

“You want me here.” 

“No, I don’t,” Ariadne shakes her head. “I really fucking don’t.”

Mal crosses the length of the room and stands very still between Ariadne’s legs. It’s funny how an apparition of someone’s crazy mind can radiate so much heat. “Have you ever witnessed someone militarize their subconscious?” 

Ariadne shrugs. “It’s not really my area of expertise.” 

Mal tilts her head, as if assenting to this fact. “It was mine, for a while, when I was working with my father. Before things changed.” 

“Was that how you impersonated him, Professor Miles?” 

“He’s my father. We’re blood. He taught me everything I knew, and he taught you enough. It was easy if I put my mind to it. What there is left of me.” Mal laughs. This time, the sound makes Ariadne’s skin crawl less. “We’re never really ourselves, you know. We’re only what others put into us and what we choose to keep. By the end, who knows? _C'est un vrai mystère_.” 

Ariadne stares down at her hands. If she stretches her palms straight out in front of her she’d touch Mal near her upper thigh. She does, and feels her, warm and solid, but still not quite human. “I don’t think that’s true,” Ariadne says. 

“Of course it is,” Mal leans forward, then bends, kneeling neatly in front of her. “You steal secrets for a living. Make scrambled eggs out of people’s synapses. Is it something your mother would have approved of?” 

“I told you she was dead.” 

Mal says, now leaning her bare elbows on Ariadne’s knees, digging in bone against bone. “I’m dead. Or, so you keep telling me.” 

Ariadne doesn’t say anything. 

She doesn’t know what she’s expecting really, by keeping mum. But it seems that Mal doesn’t seem to mind the silence, heavy, accusatory. Well, she’s dead, after all. What does she care about the feelings of the living? Ghosts don't have any use for human impatience, no matter where it happens to live.

Then Mal says, “I look dead to you?” 

The dress she’s wearing seems to have fallen away like a snake shedding skin. What remains is a generous, lovely approximation of Aphrodite, long-limbed and smooth like a statue. Dark-eyed, full-lipped, and knowing. Mal has an oddly-shaped mole just above her left shoulder and Ariadne presses her thumb against the mark. 

“That’s something they never tell you if you get your subconscious militarized,” Mal rolls her shoulders. “You’ll never be able to get naked ever again. Men will always be watching, crawling around like little bugs, seeping into all the cracks. It seems to be one of those rules that you don’t find out about until later.” 

“Is that something people do?” Ariadne says. “That’s, I don’t know, desperate. Weird.” 

“Maybe people don’t like themselves,” Mal counters. “They’re grotesque. Weird. Such is their only respite.” 

“ - You’re not,” Ariadne whispers. She hadn’t meant to, but then Mal surges up, not unlike a serpent ready to strike. When they kiss, Mal’s tongue runs over Ariadne’s teeth and sucks the air out of her lungs. Her bare, firm breasts press into Ariadne’s chest and Ariadne feels keenly, the closeness of skin through her clothes. 

“That’s because I’m not,” Mal agrees, inches away from her once more and suddenly Ariadne is filled with a sense of impenetrable loss. “But I’m no less you. What you want. What you’re afraid of. What you wish you had.” She traces a path with her mouth, from the corner of Ariadne’s lower lip down the line of her jaw, to her throat and Ariadne flinches.

“Scared?” Mal murmurs. 

“Learned response,” Ariadne says. She brings her hand around to cup around Mal’s head. If she needs to, she can yank - 

“Good girl.” Mal looks up at her approvingly. “You were always quick. But we have to be, don’t we? A little taste of fear keeps us all sharp.” 

Daringly, as if she is outside of herself, Ariadne reaches to wrap her hands around Mal’s throat. She drags her finger across Mal’s pulse and and feels her heartbeat jump. “Yes. With fear in mind, I won’t ever be alone.”

**Author's Note:**

> [Lincoln Cathedral](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Cathedral) is a wonderful pastiche of misfortune, which I thought was very fitting for this fic. If you'd like to find out more about the imp, there is some information [here](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lincoln_Imp).


End file.
